It is particularly preferred to employ Staphylococcal genes and gene products as targets for the development of antibiotics. The Staphylococci make up a medically important genera of microbes. They are known to produce two types of disease, invasive and toxigenic. Invasive infections are characterized generally by abscess formation effecting both skin surfaces and deep tissues. Staphylococcus aureus is the second leading cause of bacteremia in cancer patients. Osteomyelitis, septic arthritis, septic thrombophlebitis and acute bacterial endocarditis are also relatively common. There are at least three clinical conditions resulting from the toxigenic properties of Staphylococci. The manifestation of these diseases result from the actions of exotoxins as opposed to tissue invasion and bacteremia. These conditions include: Staphylococcal food poisoning, scalded skin syndrome and toxic shock syndrome.
The frequency of Staphylococcus aureus infections has risen dramatically in the past 20 years. This has been attributed to the emergence of multiply antibiotic resistant strains and an increasing population of people with weakened immune systems. It is no longer uncommon to isolate Staphylococcus aureus strains which are resistant to some or all of the standard antibiotics. This has created a demand for both new anti-microbial agents and diagnostic tests for this organism.
Many two component signal transduction systems (TCSTS) have been identified in bacteria (Stock, J. B., Ninfa, A. J. & Stock, A. M.(1989) Microbiol. Rev. 53, 450-490). These are involved in the bacterium's ability to monitor its surroundings and adapt to changes in its environment. Several of these bacterial TCSTS are involved in virulence and bacterial pathogenesis within the host. Histidine kinases are components of the TCSTS which autophosphorylate a histidine residue. The phosphate group is then transferred to the cognate reponse regulator. The Histidine kinases have five short conserved amino acid sequences (Stock, J. B., Ninfa, A. J.& Stock, A.M.(1989) Microbiol. Rev. 53,450-490, Swanson, R. V., Alex, L. A. & Simon, M. I.(1994) TIBS 19 485-491). These are the histidine residue, which is phosphorylated, followed after approximately 100 residues by a conserved asparagine residue. After another 15 to 45 residues a DXGXG motif is found, followed by a FXXF motif after another 10-20 residues. 10-20 residues further on another glycine motif, GXG is found. The two glycine motifs are thought to be involved in nucleotide binding. This family of histidine kinases includes ResE protein from Bacillus subtilis, which is part of the ResD/ResE TCSTS. This TCSTS controls the regulation of aerobic and anaerobic respiration in B.subtilis and can also affect sporulation, carbon source utilization and Pho regulon regulation (Sun, G. et al., (1996) J. Bacteriol., 178, 1374-1385).
Response regulators are components of the TCSTS. These proteins are phosphorylated by histidine kinases and in turn once phosphorylated effect the response, often through a DNA binding domain becoming activated. The response regulators are characterized by a conserved N-terminal domain of approximately 100 amino acids. The N-terminal domains of response regulators as well as retaining five functionally important residues, corresponding to the residues D12, D13, D57, T87, K109 in CheY (Matsumura, P., Rydel, J. J., Linzmeier, R. & Vacante, D. (1984) J. Bacteriol. 160, 36-41), have conserved structural features (Volz, K. (1993) Biochemistry 32, 11741-11753). The 3-dimensional structures of CheY from Salmonella typhimurium (Stock, A. M., Mottonen, J. M., Stock, J. B.& Schutt, C. E. (1989) Nature, 337, 745-749) and Escherichia coli (Volz, K. & Matsumura, P. (1991) J. Biol. Chem. 266, 15511-15519) and the N-terminal domain of nitrogen regulatory protein C from S.typhimurium (Volkman, B. F., Nohaile, M. J., Amy, N. K., Kustu, S. & Wemmer, D. E. (1995) Biochemistry, 34 1413-1424), are available, as well as the secondary structure of SpoOF from Bacillus subtilis (Feher, V. A., Zapf, J. W., Hoch, J. A., Dahlquist, F. W., Whiteley, J. M. & Cavanagh, J. (1995) Protein Science, 4, 1801-1814). These structures have a (a/b)5 fold. Several structural residues are conserved between different response regulator sequences, specifically hydrophobic residues within the .beta.-sheet hydrophobic core and sites from the alpha-helices.
Among the processes regulated by TCSTS are production of virulence factors, motility, antibiotic resistance and cell replication. Inhibitors of TCSTS proteins would prevent the bacterium from establishing and maintaining infection of the host by preventing it from producing the necessary factors for pathogenesis and thereby have utility in anti-bacterial therapy.
Clearly, there is a need for factors, such as the novel compounds of the invention, that have a present benefit of being useful to screen compounds for antibiotic activity. Such factors are also useful to determine their role in pathogenesis of infection, dysfunction and disease. There is also a need for identification and characterization of such factors and their antagonists and agonists which can play a role in preventing, ameliorating or correcting infections, dysftnctions or diseases.
The polypeptides of the invention have amino acid sequence homology to a known ResE protein from B.subtilis. See Swissprot database reference P35164.